Posts from Children

I have been thinking for a long time about all the voices that tell us we're Doing It Wrong in the kitchen. We wanted to bring you a column about the ways that you've actually been doing it right all along. My friend Cheryl Sternman Rule is bringing us this occasional dose of reassurance. — Faith

More fruits, more vegetables, less processed food. Homemade, wholesome, whole family around the table. The directives – from society, from the media, from other parents — come in constant, sometimes oppressive waves, and the message usually boils down to this: there’s a right way to feed your family and a wrong way, and even those who make the best choices they can still feel like they’re coming up short.

Spring break used to mean relaxation, with only the occasional fleeting thought about homework, or tests I would need to take the following week. When I finished school and had children of my own, it became something entirely different. These days? Spring break means stealing a few days at the beach, maybe a long weekend, and spending the rest of the week trying to keep the kids out of the way so I can catch up on work. Fun times!

In recent years, I've had plenty of help, and I didn't even have to interview anyone for the job.

This week I'm getting organized by making sure I have all the tools and supplies I need to freeze and label my meals, to make it easier to fit the maximum amount of food in my small freezer and stay on top of what I have stored away.

Cookbook: Picture: Cook. See. Make. Eat. by Katie ShellyPrice: $14Overall Impression: An unusual, quirky book, with adorable illustrations, and solid, well tested recipes. Though this book is marketed as a general cookbook, I found that it was perfect for cooking with children, even very young ones.

I love and adore my daughter. However, trying to cook with her, especially when I am in a hurry, can be a challenge. I want to spend time with her and we both love cooking, but she can be a picky eater. The majority of the time, I make simple recipes that I know she will eat without a fuss. But sometimes, just sometimes, I'd love to play with a recipe from a cookbook and know she's going to eat it. This does not happen easily.

So when I received Picture Cook: See. Make. Eat., I was delighted. Because even if this book isn't targeted at cooking with kids, I just knew that this would be the book Adz and I would cook from all the time.

Creating a stockpile of healthy, homemade freezer meals has been on my to-do list since I started grad school, but I never had the time to get organized and make it happen. This year, however, I've found some major motivation for spring cleaning and organization: the arrival of my first baby in early June.

So join me over the next several weeks as I take my freezer from disorganized disaster zone to fully-stocked, home-cooked dinner central (I hope!).

In the eighties, our phone rang a lot during dinner, something my mother didn't love, though she saw the necessity in my dad's line of work. He was a real estate agent, and a lot of people needed him outside of their own work hours. (After all, you usually have to have a job to buy a house, so ditching work to look for one isn't the best plan.) But we still had rules about talking on the phone during dinner, and they even applied to Dad.

With changing lifestyles and meal times, as well as seriously ramped up technology, the rules have changed, but perhaps not as much as we think. My parents' standards for phone communication at the table are the same ones we use today, even if we don't have a fancy box to hide our phones like the one in the above photo.

How do you store snacks at home? Do you have a system to keep them organized and easily accessible for your kids? Or is it more of a free-for-all in the pantry? If you're in need of inspiration for how best to wrangle snack packs and treats, take a cue from these snack stations and setups!

What does the guy sitting on the edge of the Fontaine des Quatre-Parties-du-Monde have to do with going out to eat? He's my husband. We used to eat in restaurants a lot, when we were dating, before children, before we turned 30 years old, a magical time when money seemed like something you should just spend. A few years later, we were still young, but broke, married and totally responsible for the future of a small but world-rocking young human. Unless our own parents were buying, we ate at home, and learned to really appreciate beans and rice.

Now that we can afford to go out every now and then, I still like to make sure it's worth it.

Have you seen The Lego Movie? It's pretty darn funny, with jokes for all ages. Recently, we took our three sons — ages 15, 12 and 7 — to see the movie, and we've been quoting it ever since. One of the lines has inspired us to add a regular cheese course to our meals. No, really.